But 24 hours later, with all such ambitions annulled by a 2-1 defeat against West Ham United and their players left whey-faced and nauseous by an outbreak of food poisoning, attentions were switching fast to a large, microscopically scrutinised tray of lasagne.

All had seemed serene when Martin Jol and his players checked in as normal at the Marriott West India Quay, ready for their 40th and final game of a campaign that signalled Tottenham's capacity, after years of flattering to deceive, to break into the top-four cabal.

While 14 points adrift of Liverpool, a burgeoning dynamic between strikers Jermain Defoe and Robbie Keane had helped bestow the rare luxury of determining their own fate on the last day.

All they needed, in a delicious incentive to throw off an ingrained north London inferiority complex, was to match Arsenal's result. It promised to be the first time they had eclipsed the loathed enemy for 11 years.

Come Saturday night at Canary Wharf, Tottenham could scarcely purge Arsenal from their minds, given that Arsène Wenger had taken his squad to the neighbouring Four Seasons hotel. Jol was in especially bullish form, with pivotal players Keane and Michael Carrick both having shaken off injuries.

A sprawling buffet was laid out by the Marriott, who advertised that they would "satisfy the most discerning palates with a fresh approach", in a private room. The majority of the team chose lasagne.

With early-night pre-game protocols in force, there was no sign of anything untoward. It was not until a touch past midnight that several players began to fall violently ill. Edgar Davids, Teemu Tainio, Michael Dawson, Aaron Lennon, Radek Cerny, not to mention the recently restored Keane and Carrick, all succumbed with alarming speed.

Those who saw Carrick recall him barely being able to walk. So endemic was the illness that Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, telephoned Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chief executive, to ask about the consequences of a postponement.

The blood drained from his face at the answer. Tottenham's failure to fulfil their fixture, Scudamore told him, could be subject to a Premier League inquiry and possible points deduction.

Levy confronted the most unenviable predicament: either Jol would be forced to field as many as 10 sick players, sabotaging any hope of finishing fourth while throwing away £10million in Champions League bonuses, or the team could opt not to play and risk incurring a loss of points that would strip them of any European place at all.

Jol reflected: "I have never experienced anything like this in football before. We would like to have postponed the match for one day but that was not really possible."

Ultimately the danger was too great, even for Jol's favoured plan of a four-hour delay. Pubs near the ground were already teeming with West Ham supporters, and local police feared the havoc that a 7pm Sunday kick-off could wreak.

The Tottenham bus pulled into Upton Park at 1.30pm as scheduled, but by then the collective sickness was so acute that the manager feared he might not even be equipped to send out a starting XI. "We will have to field 10," one club director told Mihir Bose of The Telegraph. "Have you got your boots?"

Swiftly Jol's most ghastly fears were manifested as West Ham fans, hearing the score at Highbury after five minutes, began chanting: "One-nil to the Arsenal."

Within 10 minutes West Ham scored, before Jermain Defoe, the claret-and-blue old boy targeted as a perfidious defector, rekindled a sense of possibility with an equaliser.

But the elegant, incisive play that had been Tottenham's trademark for the season was conspicuous by its absence. Poor Carrick, in particular, was visibly toiling, finding himself substituted just after the hour. "I really respect guys like Michael," Defoe said. "He went out and played even though he was struggling."

West Ham administered a nightmarish coup de grâce, when Yossi Benayoun fashioned a winner 10 minutes from time as Arsenal, inspired by two goals from Thierry Henry, completed a

4-2 victory over Wigan. The ignominy was total. Tottenham's finest chance for a decade to feast at Europe's high table had apparently been undone by food poisoning, with their hated adversaries growing fat on their extraordinary misfortune.

It was not a blow the club were prepared to absorb easily. Contact was re-established with the Premier League, demanding the right to a replay. When this was flatly rejected, investigations centred upon what had triggered the virulent bug – with all eyes, naturally, drawn to a certain lasagne.

Even here, Tottenham's search for an answer was thwarted, as the environmental health officers at Tower Hamlets Council found that the Marriott had no case to answer. The hotel was absolved of any wrongdoing, as the club's pain endured.

When Champions League football eventually came to White Hart Lane, in 2010, players such as Tainio, stricken on that hideous night four years earlier, had moved on in the knowledge that it would be a dream irrevocably denied.